What happened in Carver-Hawkeye Arena on Dec. 29 created a ripple effect through the top of the Big Ten men’s basketball standings.
It was on that day then-No. 1 Michigan State fell to Iowa. Hawkeyes fans stormed the court, and the team proceeded to storm through the conference.
They picked up three more wins over ranked teams, including another defeat of then-No. 4 Michigan State on Jan. 14. That marked the beginning of a three-game losing streak for the Spartans.
It wouldn’t reach four. Feeding off a raucous home crowd Saturday, the Spartans played desperately against the then-No. 7 Terrapins men’s basketball team en route to a 74-65 win.
Which brings us to today, when No. 3 Iowa heads to Xfinity Center. The No. 8 Terps, who haven’t beat a ranked team, need a signature win to bolster their tournament resume.
Yes, coach Mark Turgeon’s team has looked impressive at times. It’s looked dominant at others.
But if the Terps want to be a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, they should expect to win Thursday. Fittingly, it’ll have to come against the team that first sent Michigan State into a tailspin.
“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Turgeon said. “We are playing a great team that is playing as well as anybody in the country and just killing teams. Their games aren’t really close.”
The Terps would be smart to take a lesson or two from the Spartans’ performance last week. Michigan State played angry. Determined. Hungry. They overpowered the Terps on the boards. They weren’t going to lose.
And after such a demoralizing fall from the top of the national rankings, who could blame them? In less than a month, the program fell from No. 1 to outside the top 10.
The Terps are hardly in an identical situation. They’ve won all the games they’ve been expected to win — a road loss at unranked Michigan hurt, but it was far from catastrophic.
Yet they also haven’t surprised anyone. Granted, that’s not the easiest accomplishment when you spend the entire season with a single digit affixed to the front of your name.
This season was supposed to be special, though. This was the season that everything came together for Turgeon and Co., with a perfect storm of talented transfers and reliable mainstays banding together in hopes of bringing a second NCAA title to College Park.
A number of games have been hyped like heavyweight bouts — Georgetown (win), North Carolina (loss), Connecticut (win), Michigan State (loss).
But appearances can be deceiving. Georgetown is 13-8. UConn is 14-5.
So the Terps need a signature win, right? Right.
Guard Melo Trimble wouldn’t use that terminology, per se. “I think tomorrow is a big game for us,” he said Wednesday.
Senior forward Jake Layman echoed that sentiment but didn’t take it any further. When asked to gauge what kind of impact a win against the third-ranked team in the country would do for the Terps’ postseason implications, Layman answered plainly: “We don’t really look at it like that.”
The key for the Terps against Iowa will be defensive rebounding. In the Terps’ past two games — an overtime win and a loss — they’ve allowed opponents to secure 16 and 17 offensive boards, respectively.
“Our first-shot defense is great, but our first-shot rebounding is what we need to work on,” Layman said. “Giving up offensive rebounds has kind of been our thing the past few games.”
That’s not what the Terps’ thing was supposed to be. It was supposed to be slicing through opposing defenses with the best backcourt in the country. It was supposed to be rookie center Diamond Stone dunking over less talented big men.
Precisely no one thought Iowa was going to be this good, especially after the Hawkeyes fell to Division II Augustana in a preseason scrimmage.
But here they are, rolling into College Park with the national spotlight hovering over their every move.
The Terps need to turn the lights out.
